This hits home

My mom constantly dieted. She was on Atkins back in the 70s at one point and was so skinny she looked anorexic. I remember desserts of sugar-free jello powder whipped into sugar-free Cool Whip. She was worried about my weight and put me on Tab and Fresca (sugar-free sodas) at age 8. I grew up with an unhealthy relationship with food. I can still remember stealing leftovers and hiding my eating, and I thought I was the fattest thing ever. I binged on apples and bread as a teen. I really just needed a growth spurt here and there and looking at old pictures, it's obvious that while bigger than some, I was not really fat, and I was pretty active. I biked across the desert for two miles, for example, just to go swimming in the base pool. I walked or biked everywhere, after all. But I grew up fatphobic and still struggle with that, even though I am fat now, and I have to catch myself judging others and especially myself. We never really came to terms with our shared experience with food, though, and with her death, never will.

My mother judged my body as a girl. Years later, we finally understand each other

A good memoir regarding generational dieting and negative weight stereotypes and the harm it does, check out The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl by Shauna Reid.

You may have wondered where I went off to...

nowhere, actually. But my car's starter is out and so I've been schlepping around on the bus, which takes a lot of time and by the time I've gotten home I've just been wiped. It always takes me a bit to acclimate to riding the bus, but it can take an hour and a half to go anywhere if I have to transfer. Thankfully I can get to the hospital or from the hospital to the store in about 20 minutes. But to get to my friends' it's over an hour.

Unfortunately, it looks like it will be the 18th before I can get it fixed, because this week's pay goes to rent and it'll be about $300 to fix. The good news is that the strange speedometre-busting behaviour where the speed goes to 0 even when the car is tooling along at about 50 may be a faulty sensor. It in turn, can cause the transmission to have issues and other systems to go out, because the computer doesn't know how fast the car is going. That means it may not be the computer going out after all. A speed sensor should be much easier and cheaper to fix. So, I have an appointment at 8 am to take the car in on June 18th.

I'm never going to get ahead, am I? Oh, I know I will, but sometimes I get a little discouraged.

We had a heavy rain earlier tonight when I was at my friends' house. Fortunately it didn't rain on the way home. I hope the rain holds out awhile longer--depending on whether he finds a ride home or not, A may be walking, and it's several miles. I'm going to check with someone tomorrow who offered a spare van for times like this. If it's not still being used by someone else, I might be able to borrow it so that I can pick A up and do grocery runs, etc.

Meanwhile, my ankle is swelling to more than twice its size and is very painful all the time. My other ankle swells too (they do that in warm weather), but the other isn't really bad. My left one has really been hurting. It may be time to go to my podiatrist again. It may just be arthritis (it is the ankle I have sprained dozens of times), or some issue like I had with my foot last year, some stress issue from standing with my weight like it is. It unnerves me that my weight has caused broken bones.

I have a friend who's on a special medically-supervised diet where she drinks little tiny shakes and has a food bar a day of something that is so remarkably full of fibre that it fills her up. I think it's an Optifast diet. But the food is $150 a week, something I don't think I could afford, plus my insurance won't pay for weight loss plans (but will my diabetes and cholesterol, go figure). Still, it might be something to consider.

YKWIA is always trying to get me to use a food diary

and he's right to do so. Researchers have found that those using food diaries lose twice as much as those who do not.

4 Ways a Food Diary Can Help You Lose Weight